Emergency room use tends to be expensive, and may reflect difficulty accessing other sources of primary care. Medicaid recipients are often identified as frequent inappropriate users of emergency rooms, but a new report from the Center for Studying Health System Change attempts to rebut that notion.
The alleged primary spur for passage of the federal reform law was providing insurance for the uninsured, which supposedly would save money in the long run. An Oregon initiative has created an opportunity to see results from a similar effort and a report gives first year outcomes.